My 5 Ways to Maintain Daily Motivation

A client asked how do I maintain daily motivation. Don’t I feel tired about life? Don’t I feel sick about life? Don’t I feel that life is meaningless?

I understand the context of his questions because I observe people on the street. I talk to people from all woks of life. Some are really just surviving. When I say surviving, I don’t mean that they are struggling financially. Surviving in this context means that they do not have a purpose, they don’t find meaning in life, they don’t understand why they go to office daily. They are absolutely not motivated to approach their work and even their life.

How do I keep my energy up? How do I maintain my motivation?

Exercise
Exercise is the number one in the list. Exercising maintains your energy and keeps you fresh. Exercising definitely makes you feel good about yourself. Body, mind and soul are interconnected. When your body feels good, so does your soul and mind.

How do you feel the last time when you were sick? Your body broke down, so does your mind and soul. Make sense?

I prefer to exercise in the morning so that I get to be motivated throughout the day. Exercising is one of my to-do list, completing it in the early morning provides me a sense of satisfaction.

Exercising don’t just benefit your body, it helps your mind to focus. You get to be fully present to your body, and fully present to every movement.

Choose an activity or sports that you love. I do weights to push my muscles to the limit, play soccer to train my agility and swim for relaxation. When time permits, I do all these activities in a week, which means exercising five times a week.

Define Life
We are here for a purpose. You may not have discover your purpose but you can definitely define life. What is life to you? Multiple definitions on life is welcome here. It doesn’t have to be just one answer.

Defining life provides you the clarity of how you can live your life. With this clarity, you can start creating the kind of life that you desire. The definition of life don’t have to be complicated.

These are my definition of life.

Life is an adventure.

Life is simple.

Life is about experiencing.

Life is sharing.

Life is inspiring others.

Life is hanging out with love ones.

My life encompasses all the above definition. I took up singing lessons, total immersion swimming lessons, balloon sculpting workshop, visiting different beaches in South East Asia etc. All these are to experience the adventure in life.

I would be involved in charity work within my capability. I donate monthly to non-profit organization. This is about sharing in life.

I run the training and coaching business, maintaining this blog, writing a book about procrastination. This is about inspiring others.

I do not buy expensive brands. I do not get involved in complicated deals. I avoid investment derivatives. I only do simple value investing to compound my savings. This is about simplicity in life.

Define what life means to you to have a clear picture on what is supporting and not supporting your life right now.

Define Your Values
After defining life, define your values next. Values guide us, provide us the direction of how we should behave or act in different situation. People struggle to feel motivated when their action conflict with their values.

Aligned values super-turbo your motivation engine. With your values aligned, resistant to any action is reduced. You feel much more positive, and being positive is one of the factors to drive motivation.

My values in life is:

Integrity

Freedom

Fun

Love

Ever Improving

Excellence

Following freedom, I choose to have full control of my time. Working in a job conflict with this value, thus, I choose to be in business that is aligned to this value.

When most people get to visit the gym in the evening, I plan to have my gym time in the morning when most people are on their way to work. When most people do their shopping during weekends, I plan my shopping during weekday morning when there isn’t any crowd.

I am being guided by my values, enjoying the freedom of time. I don’t have to visit a crowded gym or shopping malls which is something that I dislike. This way, my life is potentially filled with positivity 24/7.

When it comes to business deals and opportunities, INTEGRITY comes in play. Any fishy deal, or deal that step into the gray area of law does not interest me. I am happy and motivated because I can sleep peacefully in the night. I cannot be bought by money, though I love it, I generate wealth in a high integrity manner.

Further distinction of integrity, I speak my mind, do what I think is right. I do not have anything to hide. I do not suppress my speech, thus I live like a transparent sheet.

Define your values and live them. You will be guided in terms of action and decision by your values. Following your values will eliminate all resistant from your action.

Complete the Incomplete
Incomplete means no closure. In your life, there must be something or some people you have not had a closure with. Incompletion can be with incidents or people.

Most of the time incompletion happen when we didn’t let go of the emotion when being triggered. This incompletion stays with us, though after some time, you thought that it’s gone, but in actual fact, it is there dragging you. Imagine holding onto many incompletions on your shoulder, how motivated can you be?

Have you ever felt relieved when you finally forgave someone after many years? Before forgiving this person, don’t you feel heavy holding onto whatever this person did to you? You can choose to bury the emotion into the deepest corner of your heart, and may not affect you in your daily life, but the heaviness is always there. This incompletion causes you to be unhappy, unmotivated about life.

Incompletion can happen to the smallest stuff. Someone who is late for an appointment triggers you, but you decide to keep it to yourself. Though this person may not have been late again, but that anger has been buried somewhere and not released. This anger can self-manifest into a bigger temper in the future, judgments or even cancer.

One of my ways of keeping myself light and motivated is to complete the incomplete as much as possible. I speak my mind when I’m upset. I will clear any misunderstanding with anyone. I will clear up any judgment with anyone.

Though at times, I may take years to clear up any incompletion, I will still clear it someday. Since I learned about completing the incompletion in 2011, I’ve completed with three friends and my mum.

Closing the loop with my mum was the best gift I gave to myself. I felt liberated from the closure. Our relationship improves by leaps and bounds. Without the incompletion baggage, I definitely feel motivated everyday.

Reflecting back in your life, where are some loops that you have not close? Where are the areas that you have not get complete? Take this opportunity to get complete with the incidents and people.

Looking at My Vision
Yes, I faced distraction just like everyone else. Sometimes I can hear my Playstation calling me loudly. Sometimes I can hear the Facebook whispering in my head. All of them wanted my attention.

When I am facing this struggle, I will look at my vision, I will re-focus on what I like to achieve. By doing this, I get to move away from the distraction.

Sometimes the thought of taking a short nap will arise. This short nap sometimes can turn to or 2 hours which waste too much time. Again I look at my vision, and then realize that so much work hasn’t been done, I’m still so far away from my vision. I’ll get a slight panic attack, and jump right into work.

Consistently keep your focus on your vision. Similar like driving. You look where you are going, eventually you’ll reach your direction. To be self-motivated, focus like you are driving. Keep your eyes in front, look to the side and back once in awhile, but never for too long. By doing this, you will keep moving forward.

3 thoughts on “My 5 Ways to Maintain Daily Motivation”

Hi Joe
Thanks for this article. Below is what came into my mind after reading your article.
Nothing real can be accomplished by thinking only. Do a preliminary thinking and start doing. The real thinking will only start when actions have been taken and new requirements are identified.
Start living, the purpose in life should follow.

I have a problem that I start with great efforts and after some days I loose motivation and concentration. I think your post will be a great help to increase my mental stamina level.Let’s hope for the best!

Hi Shawn, thanks for reading this post. I’m glad that this post is a great help to you. One point I have for you. You may want to be more cautious of your words. “hope for the best”, isn’t exactly very empowering.